Information technology and how we use it has truly transformed peoples lives over the last 10 years. The widespread adoption of the PC, broadband internet and the mobile phone have given people a whole new way to interact with the world.

What surprises (although probably shouldn’t) is how it’s the technology guys that have pushed this change onto traditional industries. For example, Apple (a computer company) revolutionised the music industry, both with the iPod and iTunes downloads, Amazon (an online book retailer) have created the most disruptive piece of technology to the literary world since the invention of the printing press – the kindle. Google (an internet search engine) have developed a brand new open source internet browser, mobile device operating system and computer operating system (among many, many other things).

Out of the few short examples above, it amazes me how the industry leaders of 1999 have let this happen and responded so inadequately. The music industry has spent its time and money suing people who download music thinking that 1 lawsuit will stop 1 million downloaders. Perhaps it could have spent its time looking at how and why people were downloading and how it could capitalise on it, rather than how it was suffering from it.

Similarly, the film industry has been incredibly slow in adopting to new market trends. 10 years ago you had to wait months or years for a film to move from the cinema to video or TV – now it’s weeks or months. Is that all it can manage in 10 years? Let’s see the film industry itself find new ways of satisfying it’s customers by looking at the core aim of the industry, rather than being disgruntled by how other people are changing it. The consumers are changing things because the industry doesn’t.

It’s the same story with book publishers and countless other industries and products. Established players lose perspective and open the door for outsiders to come in and revolutionise their industry. Theodore Levitt wrote a fantastic article in the 1960′s about companies should see themselves in the bigger picture, and orientate themselves towards the customer and their needs, rather than the other way around. For example, oil companies should see themselves as energy companies and should be the biggest investors in renewable energy. For one reason or another, this still doesn’t seem to be happening for many established organisations. I’m not sure why – perhaps the people at the top are complacent, perhaps they’re too stuck in their ways…who knows. What I do know, is that those who can’t see change and adapt to it, will fail.

I’m glad that I’m running a young business that looks at things differently. Perhaps that’s why I look at things this way, or perhaps I run such a business because I look at things this way. Retail is moving online in a big way, and the next decade will see transformation in the way we buy and physically acquire goods and services. I look forward to being a part of that change in some way…and hopefully seeing it coming with enough foresight to adapt to it.

I wish everyone peace and prosperity in the new year.

I have recently used Google maps, combined with street view, to find businesses, hotels or restuarants in parts of the world that i’ve never been to. I found an electronics retailer in Pottsville, Australia, i found a hotel and a Japanese restaurant in Manchester – all thanks to these services. Now this technology is not new, you have been able to search online directories for nearly as long as the internet has been around, but street view definitely adds another level.

I was called by someone who was not sure where they were going, they knew what street they were on, but not which way to go. Pull up street view, check it against Google maps and hey presto…”you should see a cafe on your left, walk past that then take the next right”. It is a truly revolutionary step. The ability to step inside the map and actually see the streets, see the shops and read the signposts makes the task so much easier.

When i double clicked on any of the photos i could see the image, but just not the thumbnail. Thankfully it fixed itself with a restart.

Interestingly, the majority of visitors use Internet Explorer Version 6.0! I’m rather surprised about that. I know that it’s still the most popular browser, but i figured that people who read blogs are probably more interested in technology, therefore are more likely to use Firefox. While this may still be the case, and the proportion of Firefox users over IE users may be higher for blog readers, i’m still a little disappointed Firefox is not KING!

Therefore, i’ve installed a link at the top of the page to allow anyone who doesn’t already have Firefox to download it now!

Current stats:
IE 6.0 – 37.25%
Firefox 2.0 – 24.51%
Safari – 14.71%
IE 7.0 – 12.75

Also rather interesting, Google accounts for over 77% of search engine referrals, and the term ‘sexist jokes’ accounts for over 44% of all searches! A small example, but an interesting insight into Google’s dominance of the search industry.

Thankfully my research seems to have been pretty good, as the report pretty much says the same as what i found. The reassuring thing is that fraudulent clicks which are not removed by Google account for roughly 0.02% of all clicks – a serious difference from the 30% claim made by some reports! You can check out Google’s full report here.

Why is this worth mentioning you ask? Because at the same time as i’m reaching this first milestone, the storage offered has soared to 2800+MB! Nearly 3GB of free storage for every Gmail account! Quite astounding really.

You can watch the account size ticker steadily increase at www.gmail.com.

If i can use roughly 1GB per 18 months, and the storage limit increases by 1GB every 18 months…then all is well. However, with Google, i suspect that it won’t be long before that storage limit is drastically increased!

Google was originally called ‘Backrub’ after the novel way that it assessed the importance of websites by looking at the sites that linked ‘back’ to them.

Google tried to sell their, now famous, algorithm ‘PageRank’ to nearly every major technology firm in Silicon Valley for $1million. Everyone turned them down stating that search simply wasn’t the way forward, or a key to making money on the internet. Tell that to the fastest growing company in history now!

Google’s (already mentioned) now famous algorithm is in fact owned by Stanford University where Larry Page was undertaking a PhD at the time. Their licensing office helps students market their ideas while sometimes retaining ownership of them. It’s leased exclusively to Google until 2011.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed their product at Stanford University in a building partly funded, and named after, one Mr William Gates! (Bill Gates – Microsoft dude!).

Google is in fact a word. It’s a very large number – 1 with 100 zeros after it. However, the highly intelligent pair managed to misspell it as it is supposed to be written googol, much to their advantage as at the time www.googol.com was already owned by someone.

Oh…now was that enough to wet your appetite for more?? Fear not…a hundred page dissertation on this fascinating company is on its way!

What does this say about the company? Not really sure. Businesses (and humans alike) can only do so much to promote a certain image, and Google was always keen on being seen as the good guy. However, we must remember that they’re a multi-billion dollar company, they have a board of directors, they are incorporated (which means they have a legal commitment to making the most money possible for their shareholders), they are in a highly dynamic market and they are a major global power – they need to have stategies and rules. Unfortunately this may be the very thing that bursts their bubble. No one is really sure how and when their bubble will burst, but as IBM and Microsoft before them, it is likely to burst. A company that’s success is down to the fact that they are innovative and interesting…and well…fun, can’t suddenly turn into a dictating and controlling powerhouse without losing a serious batch of users.

Interestingly, China recently unblocked wikipedia claiming that the Chinese internet users couldn’t live without it! What does this say about all the companies that succumbed to the government’s censoring policy? Arguably Google (implying the trademarked company Google Inc) is more important for net users than wikipedia, and if they and other big players had held on a few months longer, we could see a situation today where very few sites are censored in the country.

The good folks at Google have been releasing information on searches for a few years now…but i’ve only just learned of it! Basically you can view the top searches each week, fastest gaining and fastest declining searches each week, which gives you a very interesting perspective on what our society is interested in.

Check out the UK one here (new window).

Thanks to Callum (new window) for setting me up with a secure tunnel to his UK server…allowing me to browse the web unrestricted like a happy little bunny!

This isn’t one of China’s many restrictions, but a Google policy to not show video in China. Part of the deal when Google agreed to release a Chinese language search engine was that there would be heavy censoring (click here to open a list of words which bring up censored results in Google China, new window)…and Google Video seems to have been hit too!

It very much follows Google’s general privacy policy (new window) and basically doesn’t really tell you what they will do with the specific data that they will store on each user who uses the service. They will collect and store usage data and other information on each user for up to 180 days, and thereafter store aggregated non-user specific usage data for the service. They will use a person’s position in the city to provide localised targetted advertising – a great thing when in need, but a dangerous weapon for missuse.

They will, for instance, share data with subsiduries and ‘other trusted businesses or persons’ for processing personal information on Google’s behalf. Who are these trusted businesses or persons…and what personal information needs to be processed? They have said they will divulge personal user’s information for legal matters without notifying the user, if it is thought to impede an ongoing investigation.

While these parameters are broad and can easily leave the end user with personal information being shown to a number of parties, we must also remember that Google is a business and is providing the service for free. It puts them in a tough position being the watchdog on all it’s users across the city, and what to do with that information. If they realise that a particular user has been searching and accessing information on how to make a bomb…should they inform the authorities?

However, this is nothing new. Google knew exactly what problems it would face regarding privacy issues, and what problems it currently faces – yet is keen to go ahead with the plan. Why? Sure their plan to digitise and organise the world’s information to make it easily accessible for everyone is a great idea – but who says they should have the power and control over that information?

“Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.”

Gore Vidal (1925 – )

The computer market has been overshadowed by giants for most of its 20 year life. At the beginning, IBM dominated the scene, and with the rise of PCs, Microsoft followed. Microsoft’s aim was to have a PC in every home, and every PC running Windows software. While this has not happened, they’ve still done well squashing the opposition so that most PCs do in fact run Windows.

However, it was the opposition, which seemed to have no chance at all, that has eventually succeeded. Although Microsoft bought up, or sued out, nearly all software firms that it saw as opposition, it could never stop open source software. Although Google is not open source, I believe it is built on those principals (despite the fact they don’t release their search algorithm). I hold this view because as a company, they aim to satisfy the consumer’s demand as their first priority, and make profits afterwards (however true may be is not under debate here!).

The speed with which they rose to power is somewhat mind-blowing, but just shows the position of the market today. It is the mere fact that a major competitor to Google and Microsoft could just as quickly rise out of a garage, which keeps Google on their toes, and keeps them innovating new products everyday. While they still assert their global corporate dominance by snapping up smaller firms by the barrelful, they have no real sustainable competitive advantage – other than loyal users.

This is somewhat similar to Microsoft. Yes, everyone uses Windows and Office – but free alternatives are available. In my opinion, by the time these free alternatives become more widely known, and by the time software reaches what I like to think of as a global compatibility threshold (when a compatibility standard will have to implemented in all software for it to be competitive in the market), Microsoft will lose its crown forever. This is already beginning to happen with Apple announcing their move to Intel processors and the support of Windows, Google launching citywide free WiFi in San Francisco, smart-phones and PDAs becoming more popular and the internet becoming more widespread everyday. China and India’s booming economies are bringing thousands and millions of new users in the very near future.

Microsoft is already falling in many fields, and fails to show any kind of large scale innovation in its primary market – Windows. The success of small time firms like Google and open source software like Linux or Firefox clearly shows that users are becoming more educated on the use of PCs and their demands for better products will be met – either by software companies, or by the users themselves. This is the key change that will keep Google from ever being able to assert the destructive dominance that Microsoft once had. It will never be able to control the market as alternatives will always exist to do the same job for free (e.g. anonymous Google search is offered by Scroogle (new window)). All of Google’s products currently have worthwhile substitutes, yet it hangs on to its top spot through innovation and a good image – the loss of these will see the giant fall back to its humble beginnings (with a few extra billion dollars to cushion the landing!).

Google may indeed be the new Microsoft, though despite it barking and snapping at all opposition, it will most certainly lack the bite to keep a commanding control on any of its markets.

A solid overview of the day can be found on John Battelle’s Searchblog (new window), and his thoughts on it (new window) are quite interesting too.

Some of you may have noticed, although i’m sure many people haven’t!, that i have recently signed up for Google Adsense – hence the box above! (now moved to the bottom of the sidebar!)

Just to let me fans rest peacefully at night, i am not a sellout! I am not turning the success of my site into cash in my pocket…i am mearly getting inside knowledge of a very successful Google product.

Of course, i cannot tell you to click or not to click these ads. I am not allowed to click them so that i cannot generate earnings for myself. However, i will say that i have developed a sixth sense for advertising on websites, and often i simply don’t see the ads because i’m not interested in them – as many other people also do…in fact it took my brother ten minutes of me telling him there was something new on my site, before he noticed!

But, my gained wisdom from targetted advertising is that it’s not really a bad thing. Everyone hates junk mail through the post, and spam emails are really annoying. However, targetted advertising is something different. When you are looking for new windows, you generally don’t mind people phoning to ask if you would like a quote because you actually do want one. I believe it’s the same for all advertising. I group adverts into 3 main categories by rating their relevancy and level of interestingness (what a cool word!):

1. Funny: Ads which are enjoyable to watch or look at, but aren’t offering a product you are interested in. Often this type of advertising builds brand awareness. — Low relevancy but high interest –

2. Annoying: Ads which are selling products that you don’t want, and do it in a manner that you don’t like (if you did like the manner it would be in category 1!) – such as cold-calling for double glazing! You tend to ignore these. — No relevancy and low interest –

3. Targetted: Ads which are offering products that you are interested in, often the means with which they do it is not important. — High relevancy with any amount of interest –

Unfortunately, i’m not a marketing major, so i’m sure scholars will argue that there are other categories, however these are the three that i would classify most ads into. I have also noticed that i have started to read the sponsored links on Google search, and often targetted ads offer a real alternative or option when you are looking for a product. I’m not sure how useful they will be on my site, but if you see something that you might be interested in…check it out – our generaly bad perception of banner ads is from the fact that they are usually misleading and not in our area of interest. Hopefully with the increase of targetted advertising that will change and we will actually be offered products that we are looking for. For example, when i was emailing people about our trip to KL for the grand prix, the targetted ads offered hostels in KL – which was actually really useful because we were looking for a hostel, and checking out other options isn’t a bad idea!